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Alcatel-Lucent Gives DSL Networks a Gigabit Boost
coondoggie writes "Alcatel-Lucent and Telekom Austria have completed the world's first trial of G.fast, new technology enabling gigabit broadband over existing copper networks. The technology is only intended for distances up to 100 meters or 0.06 miles. But at that distance and less it helps copper keep up with fiber." It works, says the linked article, "by continuously analyzing the noise conditions on copper lines, and then creates a new anti-noise signal to cancel it out, much like noise-canceling headphones."
Nobody's going to roll this out unless Google or another larger player starts rolling it out and making the existing 6 Mb/s connections unpalatable to consumers.
We'll probably see this in about 10 years.
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The noise-cancelling scheme sounds interesting. The hardest part though is figuring out what exactly is noise - so it sounds like they would have to either invert the intended signal to cancel it out on the path to the noise measurement, or they would have to periodically turn the signal off so they can get a clean measure.
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Wow, so as long as you're in the same building as Alcatel Lucent, you're all set. You know, I think 802.11ac goes over 1 gigabit/s and reaches 100 meters on a good day. Maybe they should just go with that. I can't wait until fiber puts all these awful DSL companies out of business along with their ancient technology. AT&T really needs to go and TDS is pure evil too. Those are the big 2 around here. Time Warner's fiber backbone and 15 megabit coaxial-based internet for about $38/mo crushes them and yet some people are dumb enough to still go with AT&T and their legendary support and "pay 4x the value for your own modem up front and install it yourself" policy. You can actually get 50 megabit download speeds on a connection for under $100 around here too. Good luck with that, AT&T.
With gigabit ethernet, you can go 100 meters with cat6 wiring.
So, all this provides is the ability to use a single pair instead of two pair...at the expense of having equipment to terminate it at each end.
This has zero applications for delivering broadband. Nobody is within 100 meters of a DSLAM.
I'm running on 10/1 cable modem in Central Florida. I can't get DSL at the house - it's not available for any price.
Lightning strikes blew up a bunch of landline phone connections in the neighborhood recently, including mine. I saw the tech working on the repair at my box, which is two doors down from me, about 150 feet from my house. I took him a bottle of cold water because I wanted to get a look at the inside of the box. Chatted with him for a few minutes while he was swapping cards and drinking the water.
The phone company has *fiber* running to the box, along with 110 volt DC to power the equipment. The box then connects landline phone service to 24 houses in my neighborhood over copper. The tech smiled as my eyes got big. They could put in a VDLS2 DSLAM at that location and I could get 100 megabit symmetric. The tech said, yep, but it'll never happen.
What would it cost? $20,000? If I could get half of my neighbors to chip in, I bet we could BUY the damn equipment for the phone company. Yeah, lightning would probably blow up the the DSLAM unit itself every year or two, but I think 24-port DSLAMs are about $1500.
(Heh, captcha is "spurned")
The phone companies have long since proven they aren't going to make any further substantial investment in their copper networks, and are simply determined to milk them for as long as possible. They are in fact actively trying to shed their copper networks and go wireless, which has less regulation and higher profit margins.
The odds of AT&T/Verizon making a huge investment in technology that will be lucky to last a couple of years (fiber scales to 10 Gb fairly simply, and cable can probably get close with future revisions of DOCSIS), in a domain they are actively withdrawing from, is pretty much zero.
As someone with an ISP in the DSL game. WTF? So Gigabit at 100 meters? Isn't this really just Gigabit Ethernet over a single pair? And really, who is within 100 Meters of their DSLAM. That would cover maybe four homes.
Those 17 people within 100 meters of the hub are going to be thrilled!
FIOS is 15/5 in NYC for the cheapest tier. why would i want something faster? netflix needs 3-5 mbps
I'm on 2Mb/s cable you insensitive clod!
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The point is to make the best use of the likely-decades-old "telephone wire" going from the "pole," "telephone box" (for underground wires), or in some cases, "neighborhood fiber box" to the customer's "internet box" (e.g. DSL modem).
This wire is typically no better than "CAT-3" and frequently far worse, electrically speaking. If it's older than a few decades, it's probably chosen for low cost and voice-grade capability. It may also be run close enough to other wiring that it will pick up noise that is tolerable on an analog-era POTS line but problematic on a digital line.
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Depending on local and state politics, political pressure and "public shame" can overrule bean-counters.
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When FIOS came to my neighborhood, most people cheered. I didn't. Not because I didn't want the higher speeds, but because I was concerned about the bigger picture. The baby bells (mine being Verizon) were ordered by the courts to share their copper with competing companies. My understanding is that they were under no obligation to share their fiber. As a result, they've been ripping out copper everywhere they can to replace it with fiber.
I understand that the copper infrastructure was aged and probably a pain to maintain... but to me (at the risk of sounding like a socialist) that was simply justification for my locality to take it over to lease to communications companies. What I now have is 2 choices for internet connectivity (Verizon and Cox Cable) where under DSL I had at least 8. Yes, the DSL was slower (depending on your distance from the CO) but I'd have traded slower internet for greater freedom had the choice not been taken from me.
I don't like Verizon, and I only like Cox a little better. When DSL Extreme was a reseller for FIOS, I loved it because I really liked doing business with DSL Extreme, but Verizon yanked their reseller agreement forcing lovers of the FIOS service to either move to Verizon or abandon their Fiber for cable. I went to cable. A new technology such as this along with its continued development to perhaps extend its range is a wonderful thing, however for me, it is a hope denied because my internet infrastructure was essentially chosen for me. I am probably standing against a tidal wave to caution people to think long an hard about implications of putting yourself at the mercy of a small number of communications companies. It is important for them to do so however... if only for the fact that besides financially holding us over a barrel, they monitor us.
I'm on 128k ISDN, you insensitive clod! :)
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Great, now all the ads for DSL will be for "Up to 1 Gb/s download speed [tiny print]Actual speed will vary"
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I work with this kind of equipment. The problem isn't the last 100 feet... we've got tech that will do 100mb @ 30,000 feet relighably. If we could get that to people they'd be thrilled. The problem is the trunks leading to the DSAs. They cost upwards of a million dollars a pop to install, which is barely cost effective in city centers... but get out in rural areas where cable companies don't even bother to serve and you have as few as 12 people off a remote. Sorry, but that's only going to get 2 T1s feeding it if they're lucky. Gigabit speeds to and from equipment fed by a 3mb trunk is useless.
The real problem with broadband is the link between the CO and the remote. This goes for DSL and Cable. solve that problem and rural broadband will explode. Cable doesn't even have facilities in those areas so it would have to be over phone copper. Get gigabit speeds on 10+ miles of unshielded copper pairs... that's the goal. Good luck.
There's a ton of people on VDSL2 that get between 5-7Mb. Usually in the 2500-3000 meter range. It would be interesting to see how much of a boost these technologies could lend. Getting 30-50 Mb with a simple DSLAM and Modem swap would be game changer.
The last Olympics needed ~6-7Mbps for 720p, ~8-10Mbps for 1080p so if you had two people in your house who wanted to watch different sports you'd very tight at 720p and SOL at 1080p. Those streams were also pretty blocky, the realtime compressors probably could have used 2-3x the bandwidth to make things smoother.
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I work for a univerity that just overhauled our DSL system with VDSL2. One 24-port DSLAM (VDSL2 with ADSL2+ fallback) costs us $4K......without any educational pricing. We are getting stable 20/5 connections within 5000 feet. And our copper plant is 40+ years old!!!
so upgrade to the highest tier service that month
what do you need it for every day?
What you're suggesting is compression.
As the data gets larger and the possibilities grow, the size of the information to reference that information gets as big as, if not bigger, than the information itself.
And, at best, you'd get something roughly equivalent to gzip'ing HTML pages, zipping up PDF's, or compressing images (all of which already happen as part of the standard protocols).
The noise-cancelling scheme sounds interesting.
If you'll read TFA a little more closely than the OP did, you'll find that the noise-canceling thing is NOT how they got the 1G-ish single-pair link to work.
What the noise-canceling thing is about is when you have TWO OR MORE pairs bundled into a single logical link. Then it figures out what the cross-talk between the individual pairs looks like and cancels THAT out. This lets the individual signal pairs run as fast as a lone pair and the total bandwidth of N bundled pair be N times the bandwidth of one, rather than substantially less.
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